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Wayne Manor, built during the age of the dinosaurs and barely renovated since, was one of the oldest remnants of Old Gotham. It had a preservation order on it, implemented by the cultural department of Gotham’s City Council. A preservation order that Bruce Wayne was bending slightly with the whole Batcave-ordeal.
Despite his history-loving heart, Jason was willing to look past that. The Batcave was quite useful.
The Manor had housed generations of people before the ever-expanding Wayne family fell into its lap. It had seen countless people come and go, seen the rise and fall of the steam locomotives, of VCRs, and of Ziggy Stardust. It was a magnificent building, and it had been, and currently was, home to wonderful things.
Though as it stood, towering over the hills and plains of Bristol, it had become a thing of legend. Its towers and turrets, its gothic arches and snarling gargoyles, painted a picture made of nightmares to any children unfortunate enough to lay their eyes on it during the night.
Don’t go near Wayne Manor, they’d whisper, The gargoyles come alive at night! I swear it!
And who could blame them? The howling wind around each corner, the way the moon played with light through the curling clouds, way, way above.. It was straight out of a ghost-story. Tall shadows seemed to stretch and warp in the old family graveyard on the grounds. Who’s family? There was no way of knowing. Probably several. Most of the stones were crumbling and worn, among them an angel, reaching for the sky, stony face marred with tear-tracks of erosion.
Jason thought it was sort of nice.
It was home. It had been home. Somewhere in his heart, he adored it. Adored each carved out statue, each lovingly etched decorative panel. The dark wood, glowing almost like honey in the summer. The way the gardens caught the sunlight, the way the tall, buckled windows let it in, dust swirling lazily in the rays.
But there was always something that seemed to rustle in the rose bushes, something in the corner of your eye. A shadow that seemed to disappear when you turned around. Something you didn’t quite manage to catch before it was gone.
But still. Wayne Manor was an awe-inspiring building, and Jason was willing to look past Bruce’s bending of the preservation order if it meant that he could laze around in the giant library and fuck around in the Batcave now and again.
What Jason was not willing to look past, however, was the fact that Wayne Manor was haunted.
Like, horror-movie-based-on-a-Shirley-Jackson-novel haunted.
He was seemingly the only one that had noticed, though.
-
Sure, when Jason was a kid, sometimes things had been a little strange.
Things had disappeared and then reappeared a week later in a place he could have sworn he didn’t put them in. But Jason’s mind was already a messy place when he was a kid. It hadn’t been that far of a stretch to think he’d just forgotten where he’d put his shit.
And sometimes, the wind howling outside had sounded a little bit more human than normal. A little bit like it was coming from inside the house. But that was just because Gotham was a very windy place, and the wind was especially strong outside of the main city, where Wayne Manor was built.
There was that one time, when he’d seen the shadow of a woman standing at the far end of a corridor. But he’d chalked that one up to an overactive imagination and his fear of the dark making him see things that weren’t really there.
-
“Why is it so cold here?” Jason had asked Bruce.
He’d been at the manor for less than six months, and though he was settling in, some things still made him uncomfortable.
The hallways were void of people, the grand staircase a weighty presence that led to innumerable corridors, long and winding . Finding his way to his room could still be a challenge if the lights were off and he wasn’t focused. The ceilings were high, high, high above, and if it weren’t for Alfred’s constant and ruthless dusting, Jason was sure that there would have been heavy clothlike spiderwebs in each and every one of the corners.
“What do you mean, lad?” Bruce had asked him, and Jason had gestured to the doorway to the library. He’d been intending to enter, to burrow himself down in an armchair and lose himself in a book for the rest of the evening. But once he’d tried to step through the door, a sudden cold had chilled him to his bones, and he’d backed out again.
“The doorway. It’s cold as balls.”
“Language, Jason,” Bruce had said, but it lacked strength. He’d mostly given up on trying to wring the rough Crime Alley vernacular out of Jason at that point. And Jason had been glad for it. He’d been holding tightly onto the traces of his previous life. He hadn’t wanted to lose what little there was left that tied him back to his roots.
Jason had watched as Bruce, with one slightly raised eyebrow, had humored him and stepped through the doorway. He’d watched as Bruce shivered, and had felt a sort of relief. It hadn’t just been his imagination.
“Hm.” Bruce had stroked his chin, “We’ll have to check for drafts. Nothing to worry about.”
Jason had nodded, had thought that it sounded reasonable, and had hurried past the cold spot into the library.
-
It had been something that permeated his childhood, the strangeness of Wayne Manor. But it was something that he’d gotten used to.
Sometimes, there were spots so cold that it made his teeth clatter as he walked through. But he just shouldered through them, ignoring it. And after a while, they seemed to lessen in frequency. Either that, or he got so used to them that he simply didn’t notice anymore.
Wayne Manor had always been a little strange. But after a year of living in it, Jason had simply forgotten about it. It had become like any other house to him. The strangeness was a mere dusty memory, an unsolvable mystery that didn’t really need to be solved.
But then he’d died. And come back. And now, everything was suddenly clearer.
-
The first time he steps foot in the Manor after his death, is months after All The Bad Things. They’ve made up, things are surprisingly calm (at least as calm as they could ever be in Gotham), Jason’s found himself in possession of a little brother, and though things aren’t completely alright, they’re kind of fine. Better than they have been in a long, long time.
He’s been in the cave a few times since he came back to life, but not in the actual Manor. So when he walks through the front door, and a blood-freezing chill runs through his entire body, he assumes it’s just anxiety.
Alfred welcomes him warmly, and Jason’s mood is immediately lifted. The best thing about making up with his family is definitely having Alfred back in his life. Everything else be damned.
The Manor looks as it has always done, paintings straight on the wall, wood polished and gleaming, floor spotless.
Except for a trail of footprints by the door. They’re dark and wet. He’s surprised that whoever walked outside, barefoot at that, didn’t wipe their feet. Everyone knows how tidy Alfred keeps the Manor, and everyone knows not to drag in dirt.
“Damn,” He says, pointing, “Someone take a dip in the pond?”
“Hm?” Alfred says, looking where Jason is pointing, “What do you mean, dear boy?”
“The footprints. Who tainted your floors, Alf?” The floors are dark wood, but the footprints don’t blend in that well. Alfred should be able to see them, unless his sight has started to worsen over the years.
“What footprints?” Alfred says, squinting. And Jason crouches down and points. When he gets closer to them, though, he notices something off about them. They’re not water, nor are they mud. He drags a finger through one of them and wrinkles his eyebrows when the finger comes back slick with something red.
“What on-” Alfred says, staring with concern.
“You see ‘em now?” Jason asks.
“I see them. I can’t believe I didn’t notice! Is it really blood, or has Master Dick orchestrated another secret paintball fight?”
Jason rubs his thumb and pointer together, and smells the liquid between them. It smells like iron, and like cold, damp, rot.
“It’s blood, alright. Someone hurt?”
“Not that I know of,” Alfred says with a voice that indicates that he sure as hell is going to find out who has been hiding an injury from him.
They follow the footsteps, but the tracks stop after just a few meters. Disappeared into thin air.
When asked, no one wants to fess up to being injured, and they all claim that they were not the ones to leave the footprints.
Jason suspects that it’s Dick. But the mystery is left unsolved, and they all move on with their day.
Jason’s got a lingering feeling of unease, but he ignores it. It’s probably nothing.
-
The second weird thing happens when they’re eating lunch.
They’re sitting in the kitchen, eating a lovely pasta dish that Alfred has made. It’s one of Jason’s favorites, and everything is sickeningly domestic.
Until a door slams. Jason jumps at the sound, and all eyes turn to him.
“You good?” Tim asks, shoveling pasta into his mouth, and Jason squints in the direction of the sound. It was far away, but not by a lot. Maybe the library?
“Did no one else hear that?” He asks, and everyone looks at each other, confused.
“Hear what?” Dick asks, and Jason looks at him with disbelief.
“The door! Is there someone else here?”
“What door? No one else is here but us,” Bruce says, putting down his fork.
“A door slammed. Did no one hear it?” For a moment, Jason questions if the sound was actually there. But he can still hear it echo in his mind. It was there. Definitely.
“Perhaps it was just the Manor settling. It’s an old house, after all. Lord knows it creaks and groans now and again.” Alfred sounds calm and rational, and Jason wants to think that that was the case, but this wasn’t the sound of the house settling.
“No. It was a door. Slamming shut.”
“Cross-breeze?” Tim offers, and everyone nods. They continue eating like the mystery is solved. Jason feels a little bit insane as he keeps arguing.
“No! It’s January. Do you really keep windows open? Don’t you always say the Manor is a bitch to heat?” He turns to Alfred.
“In less… vulgar terms, yes.”
“Are you sure it was a door? It couldn’t have been a branch snapping outside? Or one of us scooting a chair?” Dick presents logical suggestions, and Jason reluctantly nods.
“Yeah,” He says, not entirely convinced but not wanting to argue further, “Maybe.”
The rest of the day passes in peace, and they patrol together for once. When they get home, they change out of their gear, and all head off to sleep. Jason stays in a guest room at the Manor.
He can’t sleep, though. The wind is roaring outside, and he keeps thinking he hears scratching sounds coming from inside the walls. Maybe they have mice?
It makes him uneasy. And he tosses and turns until the small hours of the morning, before he finally drifts off into restless sleep.
-
A week or so passes, and he finds himself in the Manor again. This time, he’s in the time capsule that is his old room.
He can’t sleep this time either, so instead he’s up, browsing his bookshelf. There’s a knock on his door, and he hums in response. The door creaks open.
“Hi, you busy?” Tim asks, and Jason turns towards him. He’s holding his laptop, the corridor behind him is dark, and the screen casts white highlights up on Tim’s face, making him look gaunt and hollow.
“Nah, whatcha need?”
Tim enteres, and closes the door behind him.
“The Penguin.” Tim sits down on his bed and stares at the laptop, “He’s getting a lot of shipments from this one company, Hypnos Delivery.”
“What about it,” Jason finds the book he’s looking for and slots it out of the shelf.
“It’s not a-”
Tim continues speaking, but Jason isn’t listening anymore. There’s a knocking coming from far away. It’s faint, but he can hear it clear as day.
“Shut up.” He says, and Tim wrinkles his nose.
“What?”
“Shut up,” He repeats, “Listen.” He’s staring at the door, and the knocking is still there. It must be far, far down the hall. It’s irregular and comes in short bursts or in rapid succession.
Tim is also looking at the door, but he’s frowning.
“I don’t hear anything.”
Jason rips his gaze away from the door to look at Tim with an unimpressed look.
“No wonder, with all that emo music you’re always blastin’ on your iPod.”
“IPod?” Tim raises his eyebrows and looks a little like he finds Jason very amusing, “Who uses-”
“Schh.” Jason gestures to the door with the hand still holding the paperback from his bookshelf. The knocking is closer. It’s almost frantic. It has definitely gotten louder, “Don’t tell me you don’t hear that?”
Something cold and slimy is slithering down his veins. There’s something wrong with the knocking. No one in the house would knock at the doors like that. Bruce is out with Dick tonight, patrolling. And it is definitely not Alfred. The hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
“I can’t hear anything,” Tim says, and Jason scowls. How isn’t he hearing it?
It gets closer, knocking turning into loud, violent banging. Jason flinches at the sound and in the corner of his eye he sees Tim edging off the bed.
“Jason?” He asks, tone careful, “What is it?”
The banging is just a door down, Tim’s room. It’s loud enough to echo down the hall. It’s frantic and rapid, irregular. It sounds like someone is pounding on the door with both fists. Now that it’s closer, Jason can hear scraping sounds after some of the knocks. He doesn’t really want to think it, but it sounds like nails, or claws, dragging on the wood.
“Are you serious?” He flicks a glance at Tim, who is standing almost next to him, looking uncertain.
“I don’t-”
The knocking stops. Abruptly and the silence it leaves behind is too empty. Jason holds up his hand again to Tim, who stops talking.
“Listen,” Jason hisses, and Tim frowns but turns his head slightly, ear facing the door as if the sound is really faint and quiet.
There is only silence, for so long that Jason thinks it might have stopped. But then, just as he is about to shake his head and jot it down to auditory hallucinations, there is a bang on his door that makes it rattle in its frame.
Tim startles back, eyes wide and staring at the door.
The banging starts up again, on his own door. It’s deafening and unstopping, each knock louder than the last. Louder than a sound that bare fists could produce. It’s crashing, deafening, banging like a sinner on the gates to heaven. Jason is afraid that the hinges are going to give in. The door is rattling, the picture frames on his walls jumping with each bang.
“Jason?” Tim asks, voice raised over the pounding, and Jason presses his lips together. Is there someone in the Manor? Is it some sort of sick prank from Dick?
Everything feels cold.
“I don’t know!”
“Stop!” Tim calls out, anger in his voice almost masking the scared tremble.
And the banging stops. Jason can still hear it echo in his head. The door is still, the frames on his walls crooked but no longer threatening to fall down. Jason almost opens the door to find out what the fuck is going on, but he’s halted by a new sound.
Scraping. No. Clawing.
Because it has to be claws. Tearing through the surface of the wood on the other side, clacking against each other, scraping slow and agonizing down the door.
“Tim, if this is a joke-”
“It’s not. I swear.” Jason looks at Tim and finds him pallid, shivering, and much closer than before, almost as if he’s standing behind Jason, taking cover. Jason isn’t sure if he’s supposed to feel honored that Tim thinks he can protect him, or betrayed that Tim is using him as a human shield.
The scraping stops, one more bang, this one threatening to take the door down, and then all is quiet in Wayne Manor again.
Jason rips the door open, and whips his head in both directions down the hallway, but there is nothing there. He looks at the door, and finds it completely devoid of any marks or scrapes. The wood is shiny and soft, like it has always been.
And then Tim says the most insane thing Jason has ever heard.
“Probably just a bat, escaped from the cave.”
Jason turns his head so quickly that he hears something crack in his neck. Tim is leaning back against one of the posters on Jason's bed, looking way too calm.
“What?”
“Yeah, you know how birds fly into windows?”
“Tim, this was not a bat!”
“What else would it be?” Tim sits down on the bed and draws his laptop closer to him, immediately focused on the case again.
Jason just stares. Because he can tell that Tim isn’t lying. Somehow, he’s completely convinced himself that whatever the fuck it was, was simply a bat.
“So Hypnos Delivery,” Tim says, tilting the screen so that Jason can see, and Jason unfreezes, too shocked to keep arguing.
“Yeah,” He clears his throat, feeling clammy and unsettled. There’s a cold still clinging to his bones, “Yeah. What about them, kid?”
He realizes that he’s clutching his paperback hard enough to bend the pages. He straightens out his fingers and lets it fall to the floor.
The thump of it hitting the floorboards makes him shudder, but he ignores it. Pushes it out of his mind for now. After all, Tim’s asking him for help on his case. He’s gotta focus.
-
After a while, things start to make sense.
There are spindly hands, reaching through the wall, stretching it thin, like a membrane. And Tim walks right past them. Doesn’t even bat an eye. The sharp fingertips are just a hair away from his face, but he doesn’t even care.
And Dick ignores the blood that rushes from the sink. He just waits until the water runs clear, and fills up his glass. Jason stares in bewilderment, but Dick just goes about his day.
Alfred straightens an old, old portrait on the wall, and doesn’t comment on the way the eyes are following his every move. He just hums an old tune, dusts the frame, and continues with his cleaning.
A door slams shut, this time right in front of Bruce’s eyes, but he doesn’t acknowledge it. Just keeps on bitching to Jason about some dunderhead in the PR department.
They’re all ignoring it.
The house is haunted, and they all know it, but no one gives a shit.
Jason supposes that when you’ve been a victim to Crane’s fear gas, nothing really fazes you anymore. What’s a haunted house in the grand scheme of things, really?
-
So Jason follows suit.
Each time he visits, he too ignores the ghosts. The dripping blood, the shadowy reflections in the mirrors, the rustling curtains by closed windows and the slamming doors. If his family doesn’t think it’s a big deal, he won’t make it one.
And besides, in hindsight it’s obvious. Of course Wayne Manor is haunted. It’s old as shit. Jason is sure that you couldn’t count the people that have died in it if you so tried.
-
His family is already gathered in the kitchen when Jason comes down for breakfast. They all look like they’ve been up for hours, and Jason feels like garbage. He’s barely gotten any sleep.
Bruce looks at him when he enters, and apparently takes note of the dark bags beneath his eyes.
“Rough night?” He asks as Jason slumps down in a chair.
“You could say that,” He grumbles, leaning forward and rubbing his face.
“Care to share?” Dick asks, mouth full of cereal, and Jason groans.
“Ugh, the lady in the attic is so loud during the night. She won’t stop fucking wailing, like, we get it! You were murdered! So was I, but you don’t see me screeching all night.”
Everyone looks at him, stunned.
“What,” He grins lazily, “Too soon?”
“What lady?” Bruce asks, and Jason raises an eyebrow.
“The lady? With the white dress and slit throat? Come on, don’t tell me you haven’t heard her. She won’t shut up.”
Apparently, this doesn’t clear things up.
“What do you mean with the slit throat?” Tim asks, looking at Jason like he’s crazy.
“The ghost lady? Hello?”
“Ghost?” Dick chokes on his cereal, and Bruce absentmindedly thumps him on the back while staring at Jason.
“Yeah.” Jason doesn’t understand why this is so shocking, “Manor’s haunted. We all know that.”
Everyone just stares at him, and Jason gets the feeling that he might have jumped to some untrue conclusions.
“Manor’s… haunted.” Bruce doesn’t really look like he knows what to do with himself.
“Don’t we all know that? I thought we were just ignoring it?”
“You’re fucking with us, right?” Tim asks, and Jason shakes his head.
“No. Are you fucking with me?”
“There is no fucking,” Dick says, looking horrified, “Are you saying that the Manor is haunted? Like, for real?”
“Yeah.. But isn’t it obvious?” Jason looks around, but no one seems to share his opinion. But Alfred has a thoughtful expression on his face.
“There were those footprints…” He says, and Jason remembers.
“Yeah! The bloody footprints! You saw them, right?”
“Not at first,” Alfred strokes his chin, “My eyes seemed to slide right over them, but when you pointed them out, they were clear as day. I couldn’t believe that I’d missed them.”
“They weren’t any of yours, right?” He looks at Dick, Tim, and Bruce, and they all shake their heads.
“The knocking,” Tim murmurs, eyes far away and deep in thought, and Jason nods vigorously.
“It was definitely not a bat.”
“Hm. This certainly warrants further investigation, wouldn’t you say?” Alfred says, and everyone nods, still looking stunned and mildly alarmed.
-
Jason cocks his gun.
Not an actual gun. It’s a water gun. Filled with holy water.
“Manor’s haunted.” He looks at his family lined up in front of him. Tim and Dick also have water guns, Bruce has a crucifix, and Alfred is armed with a vacuum cleaner, “We work as a group. I’ll point out the spookiness, and we drive it out as a team. Everyone clear?”
A chorus of affirmations is heard, and Jason nods sharply.
“We start here, by the entrance, and we work our way forward through the manor, one floor at a time. Any questions?”
“Just the one.” Dick grins, “Who you gonna call?”
The sentence is barely out of his mouth before both Jason and Tim have their guns leveled at his head, holy water drenching him to the bone.
Jason hears Bruce mutter under his breath.
“Ghostbusters.”
-
“Goodness gracious, madam. Do calm down. This behavior is unbefitting for a lady of your standing.”
Jason watches as Alfred vacuums up a shrieking ghostly lady dressed in 1800’s garbs. The ghost is clawing at the floor, trying to pull herself out, but Alfred simply walks closer, straightens his back, and she’s sucked into the vacuum all the same.
In the other room, Tim is playing some sort of cat-and-mouse game with a shimmering orb. Each time he tries to spray it, it darts away. Jason can see the smile tugging at Tim’s lips, and he laughs as the younger boy lets out a triumphant cry as the orb is finally hit and disintegrates.
Dick is staring into the mirror in his bathroom. His reflection has sharp teeth and claw-like hands. He sprays his water gun at the mirror, but it doesn’t do anything. Jason watches the reflection laugh at Dick, licking its lips with a forked tongue. It leans forward.
“Bruce!” Dick calls, and a few moments later, their father enters the bathroom, crucifix in hand.
The reflection jolts back, baring its teeth. Bruce stalks closer, holding out the crucifix and presses play on a YouTube-video of Benedict XVI singing the trinitarian formula. The old pope has barely gotten to spiritus sancti before the ghost is melting into smoke, spilling out of the mirror and down the drain.
-
It takes four days of constant work, but once they’re done and Jason tumbles into bed, the change is obvious.
The moonlight through his window is no longer casting long and sinister shadows across his room, and the darkness of his closet is no longer as inky and threatening as he remembers from when he was a child.
The hallways are empty, but restful, and when morning comes, the sunlight over the family cemetery is playful and kind.
There’s always been something off about Wayne Manor, but going forward, the rumors will die down. People will admire the architecture and the preservation of it, rather than cast nervous glances at the spires and turrets. They’ll praise Bruce Wayne for keeping the Manor so true to its original glory, and the gargoyles will look protecting and proud, instead of snarling and vicious.
Wayne Manor stood towering over the hills and plains of Bristol, looking out over the windy city. It had been standing there for who knows how long, and would keep standing there for just as an indeterminable amount of time. When morning breaks, sunlight would dance over the roses and philadelphus in the garden. Within its halls, buckled windows will let the light in, and gleaming chandeliers will light up polished and shining woodwork.
Wayne Manor had never been quiet, and the way things were going, it wouldn’t be for a long time. It was home to many wonderful things, and whatever walked there, never walked alone.